


The Only Emperor

by coloredink



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Gen, Ice Cream
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-06-29
Updated: 2011-08-03
Packaged: 2017-10-20 20:17:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 12,327
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/216713
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/coloredink/pseuds/coloredink
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It never occurred to Sherlock Holmes that an ice cream shop might attract children.</p><p><a href="http://www.mtslash.com/viewthread.php?tid=49103&highlight=">Chinese translation</a> available.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. I Am Ebenezer Bleezer

"John, why is there a small child in here?"

"She probably wants ice cream, Sherlock." John wiped his hands on a towel. "I think that's her mother." He gestured with a jerk of his chin to a woman outside, talking on her mobile but keeping a watchful eye on the little girl who'd just wandered into their shop.

Sherlock eyed the girl--who looked as if she was about seven or eight years of age--as if she was an explosive device, which perhaps to Sherlock she was. The girl pressed her face up against the glass case to peer down at the tubs of ice cream inside, still pristine with the scoops dug into the tops. "Do you have strawberry?" she asked. Sherlock stared at her as if she'd just asked for an ice cream flavoured with used tyres.

"No, we don't, sweetie," said John. "But we have vanilla." He pointed. The sign stuck in the tub of creamy, dark-flecked ice cream read _Boring_.

The girl stuck her bottom lip out 'til you could nearly hang an apron on it. "What's that pink one?"

" _Posh Salad_ ," said Sherlock. John had named that one.

"Creme fraiche and roasted beet," John said.

The girl made a face and ran away.

\-----

There is a certain breed of person that is drawn to the professional kitchen. This person never minds having to work Friday and Saturday nights. This person loves working in a four hundred degree kitchen and wielding sharp implements at speed. This person flourishes on the edge of chaos, when all it takes is one dropped pan or one too many orders of the roasted lamb rack to send the line into collapse. This person relishes going until two in the morning, until they're limp and giddy with adrenaline, and then they go out drinking with their mates and crawl into bed just before dawn--and then wake in four hours to do it all over again.

John H. Watson was such a person, until the day a freezer accident broke three bones in his right foot. With physical therapy, they told him, he might walk without a limp, but there'd be pain for the rest of his life.

"Sorry, mate," said Chef Stamford. "The line has to go on, you know that. But you'll be all right. You'll find another berth."

John had smiled and thanked him, but they both knew it wasn't true. No one wanted a cook who couldn't stand up in the kitchen. John's career was solid and undistinguished, consisting mainly of working in various positions at several respectably mid-range restaurants in London, and now it was more or less over, and he was to be cut adrift in London with no skills and few friends. Although not for long, because without a job--and he wasn't going to be able to find another one in hurry--he wouldn't be able to _stay_ in London. He could feel himself lose interest in physical therapy already.

Stamford was not without sympathy, however. "You know, I know a bloke who might be looking for a partner."

John snorted. "Who'd want me for a sous-chef?"

And Stamford took him to, of all places, a little Italian restaurant he'd never heard of, called Angelo's.

"Not here," said Stamford. "What you want's inside. He's borrowing their freezer."

Sure enough, there was a tall, dark-haired man perched on a stool in a corner of the tiny, cramped kitchen. It was between services, so there were no flames, no cooks at their stations, grilling and sautéing and stirring and flinging plated dishes down the line.

He didn't have the smiling, jolly appearance of most pastry chefs, or the manic demeanor of most chefs. He was wearing a suit. A suit! In a kitchen! And it was spotless. And looked like it came from Savile Row, as did his shoes. He barely took notice of them as they entered; he was occupied with a countertop ice cream maker, the sort that you could buy in any department store. The contents were a vibrant bloody colour. He dug a spoon into it and held it out to John. "Taste," he said.

John glanced at Stamford, who shrugged and smiled indulgently, and did as he was told. Bright citrus-berry flavour burst across his tongue, and then he bit down on a kernel of salt. It exploded. It tasted like that feeling behind the eyes when he was working the grill station and got eight orders at once for the seared sea bass.

"Oh my God," he said. "That's amazing."

The man blinked, and a smile transformed his face from something hard and distant to something rather more imperfect. Then it was gone, and suddenly he was the cool stranger again, fitting the lid back on the ice cream maker. "You're a sous-chef, recently injured on the line, looking for a new position, I take it?"

John ran his tongue round his teeth and nodded. Then he blinked. "Wait, how did--"

"I've got my eye on a nice little place in Smithfield," the man went on. "But I need someone to go in on it with me, I'm afraid, my credit's shot. And someone to manage it, I've no room for that sort of thing. It'll be mostly ice cream, although there might be a few other things, eventually."

"What?" said John.

"It'll be a risky venture," said the man. He'd stopped smiling, and his gaze was fixed and calculating. "Ice cream has a certain reputation, and I intend to upheave it. I don't get on with people, my tastes and methods are unorthodox, but I am a genius. There you are. Business partners should know everything about one another."

"I'm sorry," said John, "but what makes you think I'd want to be business partners with you? I don't even know your name."

"The name is Sherlock Holmes," said the man. "I think that's quite enough to be going on with, don't you?"

\-----

"Very nice," said John as he surveyed the storefront. "Very nice indeed." It was bare and white, with black and white tile flooring, very old-fashioned. It also had a cow's head mounted up over the door, with headphones on, and a grinning skull staring from atop the freezer display case. "Previous owners had a macabre sense of decorating," he noted. "No wonder they didn't sell much ice cream."

Sherlock shifted his weight from one foot to another.

"Oh," said John. " _Oh_. Really. This is?"

"It's so frightfully _dull_ ," Sherlock muttered.

Well, people were very into "character" and "personality" these days. Quirky ice cream surely deserved quirky decor. It'd be _thematic_.

"Come," Sherlock said imperiously, striding through the swinging door in back to the kitchen, and John followed with dull thumps of his cane. It was rather cramped, with a large, long table in the centre, but had all the accoutrements necessary for an ice cream shop: namely, a walk-in freezer that dominated most of the kitchen's square footage. Sherlock flung it open, and in with the industrial-sized ice cream makers was a row of Sherlock's little countertop ones, hilariously dwarfed by their 50-litre cousins.

"How do you know which one's which?" John wondered. There were easily half a dozen ice creams there, and none of them were labeled.

"Well, it becomes obvious when I taste." Sherlock tapped his lip, then seized the fourth one and dragged it forward. "This one ought to be ready." He prised it open, produced a spoon from--somewhere? his pocket? his sleeve?--and dug out a taste.

John inspected the ice cream first; food was savoured with the eyes as well as with the tongue. The ice cream was a golden creamy colour, quite usual, but he could discern tiny red flecks. "What is it?"

"Just taste," Sherlock said, sounding bored and put-upon.

He did. It had an amazing texture: cold and rich and creamy, like sucking luxury off a spoon, if luxury was sweet and floral like wildflower honey. Warmth lingered on the back of his tongue when he swallowed. He blinked furiously. "Oh my God, that was amazing."

When he looked up at Sherlock, Sherlock was staring at him with a curious expression on his face. "Do you know you do that out loud?" he queried, as if he thought John might really be unaware.

"Er," said John. "Sorry. I can stop."

"No," said Sherlock. He stuck the spoon back in the ice cream--augh, food safety and hygiene, but John supposed it was just a test batch--and dug out a taste for himself. "That's just not what people usually say when they taste my ice cream."

"Why, what do they usually say?"

"Ew." Sherlock stuck the spoon in his mouth and sucked. "Mmm. Needs more pepper." John couldn't help but smile.

\-----

"Chocolate," said John.

"No," said Sherlock.

"And vanilla," John pressed.

" _No_." Sherlock looked irritated. He hunched protectively over the ice cream maker and shook habanero pepper into it with quick, vigorous movements. "If people want pedestrian, they can go to Sainsbury's."

"But we want them to come _here_ ," John said, patiently. And then, because he was beginning to realise you could never be sure with Sherlock: "You do, don't you?"

"I really couldn't care less," Sherlock replied. "That's not what I'm here for."

John put his hands on his hips. "Then what are you here for? And you should really have measured that pepper."

"Two tablespoons," Sherlock grunted, "or close enough as makes no difference. I'm here to _elevate_ ice cream. There's so much you can do with a simple base of sugar, cream, and eggs, and it's overlooked in favour of sweet treats for children. Pass me the honey. No, not the clover honey, the blue borage honey."

John also passed him a measuring cup. He watched as Sherlock carefully measured out 3/4 cups of honey and poured it into the cream base. Sherlock's sleeves were rolled up, and John could see the pinprick scars on the inside of his elbow. He leaned with his back against the counter, arms crossed, and addressed his next question to the cabinets. "Why _do_ you want to open an ice cream shop, then? If all you wanted to do was make weird flavours, you could have done that for Angelo. Or at home, for that matter."

Sherlock didn't answer, but then, John hadn't really expected him to.

\-----

At 11am on the first day of June, John flung open the doors, set up the sandwich board on the pavement (UNIQUE ICE CREAM--->), and settled in behind the counter to wait. Sherlock prowled the floor with his shoulders hunched and hands behind his back, like he was pondering a great mystery. Outside, people heading out for early lunch breaks passed the store without so much as a glance.

An hour later, a young woman peered in the window, then stepped back to read the sign, and then finally set foot in the shop itself. She was a mousy looking little thing, with hair pulled back into a sensible ponytail and desperately red lipstick, wearing a black skirt and a red top, with a little black purse slung over one shoulder. "Er, do you sell ice cream?"

"That's what it says on the sign outside," Sherlock drawled. John could not actually leap over the counter and strangle Sherlock, who was slouched in one of the colourful little chairs John had procured for customers, so he settled for giving his so-called business partner a stern glare.

She looked at the menu, which was on a blackboard on the wall behind John. He'd written it in his best handwriting (which was still not very good, but a sight better than Sherlock's) in colourful chalk, but even fully legible it was not very elucidating. She looked down at the tubs of ice cream, but the little signs stuck in them were not any more enlightening. "Er, what's in _A-Levels_?"

John opened his mouth to say that it was mostly coffee, but Sherlock snarled. "Just try it. It won't kill you."

"You never know," she said, looking a little hurt. "I've a coworker with a peanut allergy."

"No peanuts in A-Levels," John interjected before Sherlock could open his mouth and bully away _their first customer_. "You'll want to stay away from _Bangkok_ , though."

"Just try it," Sherlock said through his teeth.

"Taste it." John dug a spoon out of his apron. "Samples are free." He dug the tip of the spoon into the packed tub of _A-Levels_ and held it out over the counter. "You don't like it, you don't have to buy it."

He sent her on her way with a scoop of _A-Levels_ and closed the cash register with a triumphant _clang_. He turned to grin at Sherlock, whose smile stretched his face into something crooked and imperfect. It made him look less like an untouchable 14-year-old and more like a human 30-year-old.

"This is the maddest thing I've ever done," John said, conversationally.

"I shouldn't think so," said Sherlock. "After all, you went into professional cooking in the first place."

\-----

Matters continued apace through the summer. John's bank account dwindled even as the piles of papers on his desk increased, bills and overheads and codes and ordinances he'd never even considered--Christ, why had Sherlock ever thought he could handle the business side of things? But Sherlock was worse than useless: when he wasn't lounging about on the floor making unhelpful remarks, he was in the kitchen measuring and dumping and pouring and churning, and grunted at John if he came close enough to ask a question.

Finally, one day in late July, John closed the shop doors, stood just behind Sherlock in the kitchen and repeated his name until Sherlock snapped, " _What?_ "

"We've been operating at a deficit the entire summer," said John. "That's not unusual for a startup, but it's hardly going to get any better over the winter, and--" John sighed. The thought of giving up after all the work they'd put into this made his throat close. He'd have to throw himself on the mercy of his sister, and while she'd help him, of course, he'd have to put up with her drinking and she'd look at him with pity and offer him a job at the firm, and the thought of working in an _office_ made him want to curl up and die, or hurl himself out of a fifth-floor window.

If Sherlock noticed any of John's distress, he gave no sign. He was looking at his phone, which he abruptly shoved back in his pocket. "Come with me."

"What?"

"The shop's closed, isn't it?" Sherlock stood and swept past John, somehow giving the impression of a cloak fluttering after him. "Come on."

Once outside, Sherlock thrust out his arm and summoned a cab. John winced at the expense. Maybe Sherlock was paying. He hoped Sherlock was paying, because he gave an address in Westminster and traffic was going to be brutal.

Their final destination turned out to be a restaurant that John was only vaguely aware of, one of those posh, gimmicky venues. The sign above the restaurant featured a fat, suited bloke wearing a blindfold: The Blind Banker. Funny name for a restaurant, but John wasn't one to judge.

Sherlock, unsurprisingly, sprang out of the cab without a backwards glance, leaving John to root through his pockets for his last few quid. He found Sherlock in a room that more closely resembled a hotel lobby than a restaurant, with marble floors and some sort of waterfall and a chandelier. Through a door to the side John could see a full bar, plush red chairs and small tables. A few patrons were seated there, heads bowed over menus. The women were in pretty, well-fitted dresses and tasteful jewelry, the men in suits and neckties. John was suddenly very aware of his high street khakis.

He found Sherlock standing before the host's podium, hands in his pockets. "He's expecting me."

The host frowned down at the computer screen. "Mmmm, I don't have you down for a reservation."

"I'm not here to _eat_. If I wanted your cuisine I'd pop over to the nearest Pret," Sherlock growled. "Well, if you don't want to call for Sebastian I don't blame you. But I'd hate to be in your shoes when he finds out that I was here but wasn't let in."

John felt a bit sorry for the host.

A few minutes later, a pretty young woman with an unfocused stare dressed in a server's black and white appeared from the curtained doorway behind the host. "I'll take you to the chef," she said. "Stay close--you might want to hold hands."

Sherlock's cool, dry hand seized John's wrist, and they stepped through the curtains.

Never had he been in such utter darkness: not the time his neighbourhood suffered a blackout, not that time someone had shut him in the pantry as a prank, not even when he had his eyes closed at night. At those times there were stars, light from a crack under the door, streetlamps outside pressing on his eyelids. Here there was only black, the feel of Sherlock's fingers against his pulse point, the rustle of his own clothing. Sherlock, and presumably the server in front of him, moved with studied assurance, even though John himself felt that at any moment he might walk off the edge of the world. All around him was the gentle susurration of voices, the clink of cutlery against plate: once, a high, girlish giggle, quickly stifled. How did people even pick up their food? Did they just jab their forks against their plates until something squished? And people paid £80 for this?

"Right this way, gentlemen," said a disembodied voice before them, and John felt the quality of air change that meant they were moving from a larger space to a smaller one. They passed through several more curtains, and then a doorway opened at the end of the corridor. John shut his eyes against the glare, his pupils screaming, and had to blink rapidly until they adjusted.

They were in an office. Now that his eyes had adjusted, John could see that the lighting in the room was actually quite dim, most of it provided by a shaded desk lamp on a huge, heavy, four-footed desk. Rising from the shiny leather chair now was, John assumed, Chef Sebastian, who bore a certain resemblance to the smug, fat banker of the restaurant sign. He shook Sherlock's hand, then John's. He gestured for them to sit in the chairs in front of the desk. " _So_ glad you could come," he said in an oily voice. "And you are--?"

"My colleague, John Watson," said Sherlock.

"How d'you do," John said.

Sebastian broke into a wide, incredulous grin. "A colleague! Never thought I'd see the day when Sherlock Holmes would find someone willing to work with him. He was always too good for the rest of us at culinary school."

John had difficulty imagining him enduring the rigors of culinary school, where the emphasis was on efficiency, perfection, and standards, with zero tolerance for defying authority. Sherlock, already slouched low in his chair, drumming his fingers against the armrest, seemed to curl in on himself.

"Yes, well," said John. "We get on quite well."

"Delightful," said Sebastian, like his pedigree poodle had just taken Best in Show. Actually, he probably would have sounded more delighted by that.

Sherlock curled his fingers into a fist. "Get down to business, Sebastian."

"Right," said Sebastian. He drew from his desk drawer a checkbook. He picked up a big shiny pen and wrote something in it, signing with a flourish that ended with his arm in the air. He tore the check out and pushed it across the desk. Sherlock didn't move, so John took it. His eyebrows tried to cast themselves off his forehead. "That's the amount I'm willing to offer for a year's supply of ice cream. If it goes well, I'm willing to extend the offer for a second year, or even for the life of the restaurant."

"Six months," said Sherlock.

Sebastian's jaw dropped. So did John's.

"Deliveries will begin tomorrow, six am," said Sherlock. "You'll get whatever flavours I send you."

"Hang on now." Sebastian's face took on the appearance of a dyspeptic pug. "I'm the Chef here--"

"And I'm the one with the ice cream." Sherlock stood. "Those are my terms. If you don't like them, you can go elsewhere."

Sebastian opened and closed his mouth several times. His hands clenched into fists. "Fine," he ground out.

"Excellent. Come, John." Sherlock swept from the room. John stared at the check in his hand, at the purpling Sebastian, and then finally lurched from his seat to follow Sherlock back down the dim hallway, where the server from before awaited them.

"Er," said John, once they were back in the cab. "What just happened?"

"I just made us a substantial amount of money," said Sherlock. "Assuming you kept ahold of that check."

"Yes." John stuffed the check into his coat pocket. "Yes, I did."

Sherlock didn't need him at all, did he? He'd said all that stuff about needing a business partner and having no head for management, when he'd just made them a four-digit sum in the space of a cab ride across town, not to mention exposure with one of the most well-known restaurants in town. So why did he really need John? For his name on the lease? For an extra pair of hands in the shop?

John licked his lips. "So. You went to culinary school together?"

"Le Cordon Bleu." Sherlock drawled out the name, nasal on the end of Cord _on_ and throaty with the _Bleu_. "Don't look at me like that. A half-trained ape could train there, so long as it could pay and wield a knife. Look at Seb." He sniffed. "Anyway, it was a very tiresome business. I learned what I needed to learn and left."

"You learned to make ice cream."

"Ice cream is chemistry." Sherlock's eyes went half-lidded as he spoke, lazy fingers tracing through the air. "Liquid ratios and freezing points. It's elementary. It's precise and elegant and beautiful."

John, studying Sherlock's profile in the fading light, could see what drew Sherlock to that.


	2. Negative Sixteen Degrees

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sherlock doesn't want more customers. Customers are a distraction.

"Sherlock!" John banged into the kitchen, where Sherlock was straining a black, reeking mass in a colander over the sink. John waved the newspaper next to his ear; Sherlock didn't even so much as twitch at the flapping. "We've made the _Observer_! He liked it!"

Sherlock groaned and dropped the sieve. "Oh, _no_."

John stopped short, leaning on his cane. "What do you mean, oh no? This is fantastic!" He waved his free arm. "This is the _Observer_! It's not just some piddling little writeup in the _Metro_. We'll get more customers! Some of them might even come back!" So far only their first customer had returned, regularly enough that John learned that her name was Molly, she had a cat, and she worked nearby.

"I don't _want_ more customers." Sherlock glared at the sodden lump in the strainer. "It's distracting enough as it is."

John set down the paper and leaned against the counter, slowly, as if he was photographing a clouded leopard. "Sherlock, why did you open an ice cream shop if you didn't want customers?"

Sherlock just prodded at the mysterious mass in the sink and scowled. Whatever-it-was dripped brownish cream into the bucket in the sink below.

John sighed and ran a hand through his hair. "It's not as if they're going to unprint the thing, so we're going to get more customers whether you like it or not. Perhaps you'll consider this an opportunity to hire someone else," he suggested.

"No." Sherlock pressed viciously down on the stuff in the colander with a spatula, forcing more cream out of it.

"I have a broken foot. I _physically cannot stay on my feet all day_ scooping ice cream."

"Not my fault," Sherlock muttered.

"And _you_ ," John pointed at Sherlock, "are a menace to the customers, besides hating any sort of interaction with them whatsoever. Hiring someone only makes sense. You'd get to spend more time in the kitchen, and I'd get to sit down now and again."

"No," Sherlock said, with all the petulance of a sulky child.

"I don't see that you get to make all the decisions," said John. "My name's on the lease. I do all the paperwork. Perhaps I'll hire that nice Molly girl. She's sweet, and at this point she knows the menu as well as we do. I'm sure she'd love to spend more time in here, getting to eat free ice cream--"

Sherlock gave John a look like a cat that's just had water flung in its face. "Fine!" he snapped. "But _I'll_ take care of it."

The next day, Sherlock appeared with a woman in tow, old enough to be a grandmother. She had a short, sensible haircut; sensible shoes; and a sensible skirt with a flowery blouse. She introduced herself as "Mrs. Hudson, and I'm not your employee, dear, just here to do Sherlock a favour, so don't go thinking you can go telling me what to do." She donned a hairnet and slipped behind the counter as if she'd been working food service all her born days. John shut his mouth and popped himself on a stool behind the cash register.

The queues grew longer as the weeks went on, and by late October it'd grown out the door and nearly to the corner, despite the gloomy skies. They added affogatos to the menu and Billy to the staff, another mysterious young man from Sherlock's past who regarded the man with a frankly unsettling starry-eyed devotion. Sherlock now spent nearly all his hours in the kitchen, with Billy shuttling back and forth with refills for the tubs, extra waffle cones, and toppings. John stepped back there himself, once, and discovered Sherlock seated at the table with a copy of _The Daily Telegraph_ spread out in front of him, smiling down at their review. He left without a word, and Sherlock gave no sign of even noticing that he'd been there. The flavours grew wilder: sriracha; smoked yoghurt; sweet corn with white pepper. They now had over thirty flavours. Mrs. Hudson suggested that they set up a website, or "one of those Twitter things" to announce which flavours they'd be scooping on which days, and which John now updated, typing with two fingers and terrified at any moment that he'd accidentally "tweet" something that destroyed the Internet.

Molly still continued to come round and wait faithfully on queue, though if either Mrs. Hudson or John noticed her they'd bring something out. He had a soft spot for her, who'd been a regular even before Heston Blumenthal called them his "favourite ice cream in London." (No one remembered serving him; Mrs. Hudson sniffed and said he'd probably just said that in order to seem trendy.) She now rarely stayed to make conversation, perhaps overwhelmed by the crush of people, but more likely than not disappointed by the lack of Sherlock.

"I haven't seen him much lately," she remarked to John one day, doubtless trying to be casual and failing. She was wearing too much mascara today.

"Can't get him out of the kitchen these days." John gave her a harried smile; beside him, Mrs. Hudson explained to a customer that _Animalia_ was most assuredly not vegetarian. "What's up?"

"Oh." Molly stuck her spoon in her mouth and stood off to the side as John gave someone a scoop of _Breathing_. When he'd finished, she said, "You seem to know him pretty well. Do you think--do you think he'd like to go out for coffee, sometime?"

"Um." John wiped the sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand and thought of Sherlock, no doubt hunched over an ice cream maker, muttering measurements and freezing points to himself. He felt bad for Molly, who was really very earnest and sweet and deserved far better than the likes of Sherlock Holmes. "No, I'm afraid I don't. Girls, um, aren't really his area."

\-----

"Cheers!"

Glasses clinked, and the men downed their pints. John slammed his half-empty pint glass down on the table with a satisfied sigh.

Mike Stamford raised his eyebrows at John and brought his glass up to his face again, grinning so widely that his eyes almost disappeared. "Holmes been running you ragged, eh?"

John pulled a wry face and made a show of massaging his shoulder, rotating his joint in the socket. "You don't know the half of it."

"Tell us, John!" Bill Murray sang out.

John chuckled. "Well, he wears a suit. All the time. Even in the kitchen. Keeps it spotless, I don't know how, even the shoes."

"Ah, well, ice cream's not a _real_ kitchen, is it?" Tad Phelps drawled out. "No fire. I'd like to see him keep his togs out of the way of a fire."

"How on Earth does he get away with it?" Stamford--it was difficult not to think of him as Chef Stamford--wondered. "I've never so much as seen him with gloves on, and that's code."

John swirled his beer around in his glass. "He knows about the inspections ahead of time, somehow. One morning, I open the shop, and he's there, and he's got his hair in a net and he's wearing gloves and all, even. I nearly choked. Then right behind me there's health inspector Lestrade, cool as you please, and everything's perfectly in order, Sherlock's as pleasant as you please. Shocked me, I'll tell you. I didn't think he'd care if we got shut down because he leaves the meat out. But I s'pose he does." John downed another swallow of his beer. "Where'd he come from, anyway? I hear he went to Le Cordon Bleu."

Bill Murray summoned another round, and Stamford nodded. "He dropped or got kicked out, you know, happens all the time. Blokes show up thinking that they can make chef because their girlfriends compliment their cooking. But next thing you know, little Italian place on Northumberland starts serving these amazing gelatos. Place turns into a madhouse. People start going there just for dessert. Writers turn up asking for information, they're shown the door. Year later, this place opens up in Smithfield's." Stamford fanned out his fingers and beamed at John.

"How did _you_ find out about it, then?" John asked.

Stamford shrugged. "Right place at the right time--or wrong, depending on how you look at it." He grinned. "Angelo's a mate of mine from school. One day I'm at his place for a glass of wine after hours, I ask him his secret, and he says to me there's a young man been making ice cream in his freezer. Fellow wants a place of his own, but says he'll never be able to afford it. Angelo thinks he ought to be given a chance, asks if I know anyone. I say no, but then you go and break your foot. Lucky for you, eh?"

"Lucky," John agreed, a little bit drunk. "Luckiest thing that ever happened to me."

It was a little after one in the morning when John begged off, just not the animal he used to be. He zipped up his coat against the chill and patted down his pockets, for wallet, keys, phone--phone? Did he leave it in the pub? No, he left it at the shop. Mike had tried to call him on it earlier. He contemplated just leaving his phone at the shop overnight, but it wasn't as if the shop was far, and he could use the walk. He ought to have enough time to do that and make the last train.

He didn't turn on the light in the front, not wanting to attract attention, and noticed a shaft of light coming from beneath the kitchen door. He frowned. Had Billy left the light on? He pulled open the kitchen door, blinked in the dazzle of light, then jumped, banging his shoulder into the doorframe. Sherlock jerked awake, a red imprint on one cheek from where he had it pressed against his sleeve.

"Jesus!" John clutched his chest. "What the hell are you doing here?"

"I'm." Sherlock blinked, shook his head, then lunged for the freezer. John followed him inside, only to nearly collide with Sherlock, who was on his way out. He plunked the ice cream maker down on the counter and prised it open. John stared at his disarranged hair and thought about how many times he'd seen it like that. He'd thought Sherlock was just messy.

"Have you been _sleeping_ here?" he demanded.

"Not intentionally." Sherlock held the spoon out for John. The ice cream was pale pink.

It was fragrant and sweet and just a little bit tart. "What is that, is that vinegar?"

"White balsamic." Sherlock dug the spoon back in. "Needed the colour. The flavour's not as strong, but needs must." He sucked on the spoon. "Do you think it needs more vinegar?"

"I think it could use more strawberry, actually," said John. "But perhaps you ought to wait until spring, when the strawberries will be more in season. How often do you--no, look, you can't do this. You can't be sleeping here."

"Needs must," Sherlock said, crossly. He ate another spoonful of the ice cream, then put the top back on.

"I'm serious." John followed him back to the freezer and stood outside as Sherlock put his ice cream away. "You could, I don't know, fall asleep in the freezer and die. And then we would all be very sad. Dreadfully sad. And the world would not get any more of your ice cream. You wouldn't want that, would you?"

Sherlock popped out of the freezer. He shut the door behind him and stared down at John with a peculiar, unreadable expression. "So you'll what, take me home and put me to bed?"

"If I have to." John crossed his arms. "Where do you live?"

Sherlock crossed his arms and tapped his lower lip with one finger. At last, he declared, "At present, here."

John stared. "You're joking."

Sherlock arched an eyebrow.

"You don't joke," John conceded. "How--what--okay, you know what, this can wait. Right now I'm utterly pissed, and you're coming home with me."

\-----

"If only I'd known!" Mrs. Hudson clucked, one hand to her cheek. "Why, I've just had a flat open up. It's got two bedrooms," she suggested.

"God, no," John groaned, poking cones into the display rack. "He's already driving me mad."

"Nothing but ice cream in the freezer," she chuckled.

"I'm afraid he'll go after the refrigerator next." John put the last cone in place and lifted it up to the top of the display case. "I'll walk in one day and he'll have turned everything into ice cream. 'What happened to the lamb chops?' 'Oh, that's the one on the left.' Christ." He rubbed his eyes. "He does need someone looking after him, though. I don't suppose you. . .?" He gave Mrs. Hudson a hopeful look.

"Don't go getting any ideas," she said, giving the impression that if she'd had a wooden spoon, she'd have rapped John's knuckles with it. She finished counting bills and pushed the cash register tray back in. "I've raised two of my own, and I'm quite finished. You're on your own."

"Damn," John muttered. Sherlock couldn't sleep on his sofa forever, but he couldn't very well leave the man on his own, now could he? That first night he'd all but forced Sherlock into the shower at gunpoint, and the man was gaunt under all that well-tailored clothing. Now that he thought about it, he didn't think he'd ever seen Sherlock eat a real meal. It was entirely possible he subsisted on nothing but ice cream, tea, and the occasional waffle cone. The thought made John ill. How had he not _noticed?_ He was supposed to be a _chef_.

Mrs. Hudson patted him on the shoulder. "It'll be all right. We all want to see Sherlock well." She strolled over to the front door and turned the sign to OPEN; there were already one or two eager-eyed loiterers outside. "But we'll talk about all that later. Time for business!"

At a little past noon, in strolled Molly Hooper with a skinny little man in tow. "And this is the ice cream place I've been telling you about!" she chirped, her voice echoing off the high ceilings. "Hello John! Mrs. Hudson!"

John blinked. Molly smiled, showing all her teeth, which seemed a little whiter than usual. She'd done something with her hair, perhaps made it a little more curly. And she was. . . standing up straight? "Hello."

"This is Jim," said Molly; she had Jim's fingers tangled in hers and swung their arms back and forth like they were schoolchildren. Jim's gaze kept wandering away to the skull perched atop the counters. "He's my boyfriend. He works in the canteen. Bit of an office romance, you could say."

"Hi." Jim wiggled the fingers of his free hand and gave John a weak smile. Tallish, thinnish, brownish hair, limpid brown eyes. He was dressed in a polo shirt and khakis. A bit effeminate, in John's opinion, but some birds were into that.

"Well, have a look around," said John. The crowd didn't really start forming 'til after lunchtime, so they had a bit to spare for individual customer attention.

"Get anything you want!" Molly bubbled. "It's on me."

"Thanks, sweetie." Jim and Molly shared an utterly soppy look, and then Jim broke away to study the blackboard on the wall behind John's head, which Mrs. Hudson had taken to writing each morning, in large, perfectly formed letters and different coloured chalks.

Molly leaned nonchalantly against the counters as a young man sidled up to John's side of the counter with a scoop of ice cream in each hand, one of which was in a cone. "So, where's Sherlock?"

"Dunno," said John. "That'll be four--no, sorry, four-fifty." He collected a five-pound note and dispensed 50p in change. "In the kitchen, I would imagine."

"Er, what's in _Breathing?_ " Jim piped up.

"Got any food allergies, dear?" asked Mrs. Hudson.

"Melon makes me a bit itchy."

"Then you're golden. Would you like a taste?"

Another customer came up and gave John an expectant look. "That'll be four pounds," said John.

Sherlock chose that moment to poke his head out of the kitchen doors. "John! We're out of eggs!"

"Busy, Sherlock!"

Sherlock didn't answer. Sherlock was staring at Jim with narrowed eyes and flared nostrils. Jim stared back and gave Sherlock a little wave. Sherlock let out a huff and slammed the door behind him as he vanished back into the kitchen.

\-----

"Sherlock." John poked his head into the kitchen and frowned; Sherlock, instead of being engaged in some form of mixing or tasting or measuring, was staring at the wall with his elbows on the table, fingers tented in front of his lips. He looked thoughtful, but not in that "I am dreaming up new and brilliant flavours" kind of way. He looked very much like John did in the mornings sometimes, when he was shaving and trying to remember something that he was supposed to do that day. "What, mushroom flavour still not working out?"

"No, I've almost got it," said Sherlock. "What's for supper?"

"What's bothering you?" John stepped into the kitchen and let the door shut behind him. Mrs. Hudson and Billy were already gone for the day.

Sherlock looked at John, his expression now one of polite curiosity. "Nothing."

"That's a lie," said John. "You oughtn't lie to your business parter. Or your friends."

Sherlock cocked his head. "Are you my friend?"

"I'd like to think so." John took a seat next to Sherlock, breathing a sigh of relief as the ache in his foot subsided to a dull throbbing. "I haven't got the faintest clue what's for supper. Sandwiches, unless you've made the bread or luncheon meat or both into ice cream."

Sherlock sat up a little straighter. "Intriguing."

John rubbed the back of his neck. "That was a joke."

"No subtlety." Sherlock frowned. "Bacon is passé. Pancetta, on the other hand. . . hmmm, no, it's too similar to _Animalia_." He tapped his index finger against his bottom lip. "How about Angelo's?"

"What?" John jerked his head up.

"For supper." Sherlock stood up. "Yes, actually, I think we will. Come along, John."

Sherlock was strangely allergic to the Tube, for a man who was so broke that he was reduced to sleeping in the kitchen of his ice cream shop, and so they took a cab to the little Italian restaurant that'd started it all. Though it was Tuesday night, the restaurant had a respectable crowd: mostly neighborhood regulars, judging from their manner of dress and easy familiarity with the waitstaff. It was strange to stand in a restaurant during dinner service and expect to be treated as a diner. John leaned on his cane and felt a bit at loose ends.

Sherlock leaned close to murmur, "Anything you like. It'll be on the house."

John opened his mouth to ask if Sherlock was sure when Angelo himself appeared at the front of the house and boomed, "Sherlock! I'd thought you'd forgotten all about old Angelo, eh!" Sherlock nearly disappeared inside the man's beefy arms. John braced himself to have half his ribs broken, but Angelo only seized John's hand in both of his and shook. "And you! You are the man who gave Sherlock a chance! Fantastico, come in, come in. The best table in the house for you."

The best table in the house was next to the window, with an excellent view of a bank across the street. Well, John was hardly going to complain. And the food was indeed on the house, Angelo assured them, as he glared a waiter into dropping a couple of menus on their table. Then he whisked away with a vague, confusing promise of bringing a candle for their table, "to make it more romantic."

"You know, I don't think I can remember the last time I was in a restaurant just to eat," John confessed.

"Mmm," said Sherlock. "I gathered as much, from the alarming number of takeaway containers in your bin and the frozen dinners in your freezer."

"And the luncheon meat," said John.

"And the luncheon meat," Sherlock agreed.

"So you do eat, then," said John. "I wondered."

Sherlock's lip curled. He picked up the wine list and glanced down at it. "I eat _food_."

John was fairly certain that was an insult. It was also one that was well deserved, from the takeaway containers in his bin to the frozen dinners in his freezer, so he didn't take offence.

"Order the ragu," said Sherlock. "It's excellent." He set down the wine list. He hadn't even glanced at his menu.

"What are you getting?" John queried.

"Angelo knows what I like."

The waiter came by to take their drink orders. Sherlock muttered that water was fine, and John, after an awkward pause, asserted that water was fine for him, too.

"So you're too poor to afford a place to live," said John, after the waiter had gone, "but you eat food." Sherlock gave him an expectant look, and he went on, feeling weirdly like a detective, "Angelo gives you a free meal now and then, but he just said that he thought you'd forgotten about him, so you haven't been freeloading off of him all this time. So you know other restaurant owners, chefs, people like Angelo, who feel indebted to you, and you eat on the house." But he remembered the ribs he could see under Sherlock's skin.

"Very good." Sherlock sounded almost warm.

"You can't have made ice cream for all of them."

Sherlock looked as if he were about to roll his eyes, but stopped due to monumental effort. "Do you really think ice cream is all I'm capable of?"

No. The answer was instantaneous. No one with that creativity, that flair, that focus, was limited to ice cream. Ice cream was simply what Sherlock, for whatever reason, had chosen to dedicate himself to. Which was great for the field of ice cream, John had to admit. "So you. . . what, you're some kind of kitchen elf?" He imagined something not dissimilar to Ramsay's _Kitchen Nightmares_ , Sherlock tasting someone's gnocchi, making a face, screaming at them, _You've overworked the dough! You call this gnocchi? A New Jersey Italian could make better gnocchi than this!_

Sherlock made a noise like he was choking on a chicken bone. "Hardly. I merely made suggestions. The bright ones took me up on my suggestions. They saw an uptick in business, and they were grateful."

John had a feeling it was more complicated than that, but he also had a feeling that Sherlock was probably not going to be very forthcoming about it. Their waiter came by to take their orders. John ordered the ragu, and Sherlock would have "whatever Angelo's eating."

"And you," said Sherlock. "For a chef, you don't do very much cooking."

"Not a chef," said John. "Just a sous-chef."

Sherlock snorted.

The truth was, John hadn't felt like a chef since he broke his foot. No one wanted a chef who couldn't stand up in the kitchen, and his foot hurt _all the time_ ; he hardly wanted to be propped up against the counter chopping vegetables when he limped past a Pret and a Yo!Sushi on the way home. It wasn't as if he'd become a chef for the food, anyhow. He'd never thought of himself as a particularly gifted cook.

He did sort of miss it, though.

"What kind of food did you cook?" Sherlock asked.

John shrugged. "Oh, you know. Food. Soups and salads and burgers at lunch, steaks and chops at dinner."

"Ah," said Sherlock. "Rack of lamb with grilled asparagus. Seared tuna steaks with mashed sweet potato. Butternut squash ravioli." He did that lip curling thing again. "Hotel food."

John startled himself by laughing. "Yeah, a bit. I suppose it was dull, compared to what we're doing now."

"And that," Sherlock said with relish, "is why we're doing it."


	3. The Emperor of Ice Cream

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "This isn't _MasterChef_ , you can't solve everything with liquid nitrogen!"

And that was when everything began to go wrong, of course.

It began innocuously enough. John and Billy and Sherlock opened the shop. (Mrs. Hudson would be along later to write up today's menu on the chalkboard. She was allowed to come later, as she was "an old woman, and you can't really be expecting me to leap out of bed at the crack of dawn, now can you?") Billy stacked waffle cones and loaded the bins of ice cream into the display case. John sorted money into the register. Sherlock stared into the freezer as if he could divine the secrets of ice cream from it, which perhaps he could.

Then John twisted the tap to wash his hands after counting the money, and nothing came out. He tried both sides. Still nothing. His stomach sank and sent panic bubbling up in its wake. "Billy, does the tap in the kitchen work?"

Billy dashed into the kitchen and reappeared a bare 30 seconds later with a grim expression. "No, sir."

John wished Billy didn't call him "sir." He found it mildly disturbing. He stumped past Billy, into the kitchen, and yelled, "Sherlock!"

"What." Sherlock didn't even look up from his scrutiny of the contents of their walk-in freezer.

"There's no running water," John said, calmly. "Do you know anything about this?"

"Of course not." Sherlock glanced at John. "Why, What's the matter?"

"There's _no running water_ ," John repeated, as if to a very slow child, which Sherlock sometimes was. Intelligence and maturity were very, very relative.

Sherlock appeared genuinely confused. "Is that a problem?"

John rubbed a hand across his face and counted to five. "We work in food service. We need to be able to wash our hands."

"Billy!" Sherlock raised his voice to carry out of the kitchen. "Nip over to the nearest Boots and pick up three boxes of gloves. There," he said to John in more his normal tone. "That ought to take care of it. Oh, and antibacterial hand gel!" he called out to Billy.

"We need water to wash the ice cream scoops," said John. "And the tasting spoons, and whatever else need washing."

"And a length of garden hose!" Sherlock called. "We have a bucket, don't we?" he said to John. "I seem to recall seeing one around here."

John gaped. "You're not seriously suggesting filling a couple of buckets with water? From where?"

"I don't see that the coffee shop next door will begrudge us a couple of buckets of water," said Sherlock. "After all, it's only water."

And he was right. Sherlock went himself, to John's infinite surprise, and reported back that the barista was very sympathetic, and even said that they could use the coffee shop's loo until they got their problem fixed. John wondered if the barista was entirely in her right mind. Billy returned with gloves, a length of garden hose, and two buckets, though it turned out that there really were a couple of buckets stowed in a corner by the back door. "Can never have too many buckets," Sherlock said approvingly, which John found a little ominous.

John then proceeded to spend the rest of the morning on the phone with Thames Water:

"Of course I paid the bill!" John shouted. "It's been on bloody _automatic payments_ for the last four months, how could I possibly have missed one? And you wouldn't shut off the damn water after one missed payment, now would you? Not without warning, because _that's the bleeding law!_ "

And then:

"Damn straight it's a mistake! This is a _very successful business_ , you think I just _wouldn't pay the water_?"

Culminating with:

"And a very nice day to you, too!" And John slammed the receiver back into its cradle with a satisfying crunch.

He limped back out to discover Mrs. Hudson and Billy manning the front. It had only just turned noon, and so the crowds weren't too thick yet. Presently, Sherlock dashed out of the kitchen with another box of waffle cones, dropped them with a wincing crash on the counter behind Billy--well, waffle cone pieces always made a fabulous ice cream topping--and bolted back into the kitchen like all the hounds of hell were after him. John watched him go, then followed him into the kitchen. Thames Water had promised someone would be out there within the hour to turn the water back on, which meant they'd likely be there in three. He'd need a pair of gloves.

\-----

Two weeks later, Sherlock stopped John just before entering the store with a light brush of fingers to his chest. "There's going to be a health inspection today."

John was past the point of surprise, so he merely gave Sherlock a look that was slightly longer than usual. "How do you always know that? Also, we can't seriously be due for another one; the last one was, what, only two months ago?"

Sherlock shrugged and stepped aside to let John unlock the doors.

John flicked on the light. He stopped in the doorway and shut his eyes tightly for about three seconds, then opened them again. "Shit."

"What?"

"Something just scurried. Over there. In the corner." John hobbled determinedly towards said corner. "Shit, fuck." He knocked aside several chairs with his cane. Nothing in the corner now, of course.

With food came pests. Cockroaches, mice, and moths have been a fact of life in the kitchen since man started keeping a pantry. The challenge was not letting them into the food, and more importantly, not letting the health inspectors see them. John spun around frantically. He had a reason he knew why there was a health inspection today. "Rat," he gasped. "It was a rat. Shit."

Sherlock darted behind the counter. "I saw it. It just went into the kitchen."

They burst through the swinging door just in time to see a long, naked tail whip around the corner of the cabinets. By the time they got there it was gone, and they were left standing in the middle of the kitchen, peering this way and that for the least sign of movement. John wiped his hands on his trousers. "I can't believe we have fucking rats."

"Rat," Sherlock murmured. "One rat."

"How do you know? It's never one rat, there's always more--"

"Because I saw the rat," said Sherlock. "It was black and white, and rather small, a domesticated rat. And you're right, we're not due for another health inspection, and yet we have one anyway. Someone's playing a very nasty trick on us."

John spun to ask Sherlock another question, but then a black and white blur sped towards the kitchen door. He made to go after it, but Sherlock seized him by the wrist.

"Stop," he said next to John's ear. "We'll never catch it that way. We'll have to trap it."

If it was really only the one rat--and a domesticated rat at that--then they could probably have it trapped within the hour. John nodded. "Tesco'll have glue traps, those're the most effective."

Sherlock paused. No, that was a _hesitation_. Finally, the most diffident that John had ever heard him, he said, "I'd prefer not to kill it."

John's jaw dropped. "Are you serious?"

Sherlock scowled. "This rat is likely from a pet shop. We should be able to trap it very easily in a box."

"All right." John held up his hands, palms out. "I wash my hands of the matter. I'm going to set up the front; you're in charge of catching this rat."

"Just chase it back into the kitchen if it runs out there."

Billy arrived as John was counting money into the register and seemed strangely unfazed by their rodent problem. "Sherlock'll take care of it, sure," he said, and took a seat in one of the little chairs. John finished counting the money, but didn't dare go into the kitchen while Sherlock was playing at Rat Whisperer, and so puttered around the front instead, arranging and rearranging the displays. Sherlock had recently tried his hand at chocolate making, but no one was very interested in them. He was undeterred; he wanted to try macarons next. John thought macarons would give Sherlock more opportunity to experiment with flavour combinations.

Fifteen minutes before they were due to open, Sherlock emerged, glowing with triumph. "Behold!" He thumped a small box on the counter; from the writing on the side it had once contained tasting spoons. There was a hole cut in one side. John and Billy crowded round. Cowering in the bottom, along with several shards of waffle cone and what smelled like a glob of peanut butter, was a rat, much smaller than any dumpster-fed monstrosity that John had ever seen in gutter or alleyway. It was white, with a black hood round its head and part of its back and large dark eyes. It looked quite soft and pettable.

"Awwww, it's so cute," said Billy.

"He, I believe," said Sherlock, and oh my, those _were_ impressive. Were all rats so well endowed?

"Better get it out of here," said John. "Before the health inspector shows up."

Later that day, John opened the door to his flat to discover a new addition to his sitting room: a spacious two-storey cage, complete with slide and exercise wheel, sitting in the corner next to the television. The rat, who had been running on the wheel, froze and stared at them, then scampered over to the corner and made a show of nibbling on a sunflower seed.

"What," said John.

"I've decided to name him Tobey," said Sherlock. "He looks like a Tobey."

\-----

John was a mite. . . jumpy, after that. He took to arriving at the shop two hours before opening, Sherlock in tow, and had a tendency to flinch when he turned on the lights. Then he would stump about the shop, peering into corners and trying the taps, whilst Sherlock lounged on a stool in the kitchen, elbow on the prep table, propping his face up in one hand.

"There's no point," Sherlock said. "He's hardly going to repeat himself, and you're not going to find out what he's going to do next by fishing about."

"Shut up," John muttered, jabbing his cane ferociously about under the sink.

Ten days later, John turned on the lights in the kitchen and groaned: the freezer door was wide open.

"Fuck," said Sherlock, bulling past John, who had frozen in the wake of that expletive. He paused to wave his hands about in the doorway of the freezer, then skidded into the freezer itself to prise open each of the ice cream makers. John limped after him, glancing at the thermostat on the way in. It was off.

All the ice cream was melted, of course. Sherlock stared down into what had once been a perfectly good batch of _Adrenaline Rush_. With his fists clenched and unruly hair dangling in his face, he looked every inch the Byronic hero, and John braced himself for a wailing and gnashing of teeth.

"I need you to go to Bart's and fetch a tank of liquid nitrogen," said Sherlock.

"What?" John felt like half their conversations went like this: Sherlock said something outrageous, and John replied, "What?" as if Sherlock repeating himself would make it more sensible.

Sherlock looked at John. Except for a tightness about his jaw and a slight narrowing of his eyes, he was as composed as ever. Even more so, actually, as if the pressure had transformed him into something cold and sharp as a Japanese-made knife. "You heard me. Go to Bart's, ask for Jones in the chemical supplies. Tell him it's Sherlock. He'll know."

"This isn't _MasterChef_ , you can't solve everything with liquid nitrogen!"

"Then what do you suggest?" Sherlock snapped, and the look on his face sent chills up John's spine. It wasn't quite anger and it wasn't quite fear, but it tasted like that first burst of sea salt on John's tongue. "Hurry up. I'd go myself, but I need to purchase supplies, and nobody's got the recipes memorised except me."

John couldn't argue with that.

By the time he returned, Billy was milling about in front of the doors, halfway between confused and terrified. "Where's Sherlock?" he demanded, all but wringing his hands.

"At the shop," John grunted. "Help me with this, would you?"

Billy seized the tank without having to be told twice, freeing John to unlock the door. John explained what had happened, gesturing to the still-open freezer door. Billy's expression went from alarmed to grave to alarmed again, with those deeply concerned eyebrows that only certain breeds of dog seem capable of. "The texture will be different," he intoned.

"I know," John said. "I'm on it." He fished out his phone and poked up the Twitter app:

@negativesixteen: special today only liquid nitrogen ice cream

"There." He shoved the phone into his back pocket. "That ought to take care of it."

That did indeed take care of it. If anything, the queue was extra-ridiculous, with waits of up to an hour long. John was sure he miscounted a few people's change. Sweat dripped down the sides of Billy's face as he was sent to exchange coins for notes and vice versa; for more milk; for more liquid nitrogen; for more eggs; for juniper. Sometimes he exchanged places with the indefatigable Mrs. Hudson, who was "not as young as I used to be, you know." She put up a sign limiting customers to no more than three tastes, which had always been unofficial policy but now needed, desperately, to be official.

But Sherlock had never been so animated. He darted in and out of the kitchen like a bee buzzing to and fro from its hive, hair standing on end, long limbs everywhere as he shaped cones, poured steaming liquid nitrogen, stirred chocolate. The instantaneous results that liquid nitrogen provided meant that he could create new flavour combinations almost instantly--and then serve them. Halfway through the day the freezer had surely reached a temperature cold enough to freeze ice cream the conventional way, but Sherlock was, for lack of a better term, having too much fun.

@negativesixteen: new flavour today scottish breakfast

@negativesixteen: new flavour today 18

@negativesixteen: new flavour today unnamed try it and name it

John sort of regretted that last tweet.

Mrs. Hudson left at her usual time, but Billy stayed, standing guard on the pavement against anyone else queueing up as John and Sherlock scooped for the people already waiting. They closed an hour later than usual. John shut and locked the door, then slumped sideways against it feeling very much as if his knees had turned to water. He sat down heavily with his back against the door, knees tucked up nearly to his chest. He rubbed his hands over his face and through his hair. His eyes felt like they'd been sandpapered. He contemplated sleeping here; Sherlock had done it, so it couldn't be that bad. "I can't believe we made it."

"But we did." Sherlock's voice vibrated with glee. "That was excellent. We should do that again sometime."

John groaned and banged his head against the door.

\-----

And then weeks went by without anything happening at all. John and Sherlock still arrived at the shop two hours early. Sherlock still complained. John tried all the taps, checked the temperature of the freezer, peered into corners and inside cabinets. Nothing was ever amiss.

"It'll be when we least expect it," said Sherlock. "Don't you realise? When he turned the freezer off, he was telling us that he held all the power. This is his game and his rules."

"Then why aren't you doing something?" John demanded. "This ought to be driving you mad. It's driving _me_ mad."

"I'm working on it," Sherlock said, so seriously that John shut up.

True to Sherlock's prediction, John did not expect it at all when a black car pulled to the kerb with a screech, powerful arms yanked him inside and pressed a foul-smelling cloth to his nose, and everything went black.

It was a Wednesday night. John had been on his way to the 24-hour Asda to buy more milk and eggs, because Sherlock had used them all (again) in his latest ice cream experiments and John was desirous of omelettes in the future. Also, tea with milk in. Asda was not too far away and John had been feeling spry enough, and also he was not hurting so much for money these days that he could not take a cab back, if he so desired. And so he had gone for food, and then the whole thing with the black car and the smelly rag had occurred.

When John came to, he was somewhere quite bright and cold. He was pretty sure that Heaven wasn't cold, even if Hell was supposed to be quite hot, so that meant he wasn't dead. Probably. It took him a lot of blinking and squinting to figure out where he was, which was a freezer. Specifically, _their_ freezer. There were Sherlock's little ice cream makers; there were the big, industrial ice cream makers, labelled in John's handwriting; there were the fruits and the coffee beans. He was also tied to a chair, his ankles and wrists secured with zipties. Fortunately, whoever had brought him here had put him in a green parka with a fuzzy hood, so that he was pretty well insulated, assuming he wasn't left in here all night.

And there, suddenly blocking John's field of vision in a blurry mass, was his captor. "Boo!"

John jerked. The chair scraped back a few inches but fortunately didn't topple over.

His kidnapper laughed and stepped back far enough that John could actually get a good look at him. He was about Sherlock's age and very dapper in his three-piece suit with some sort of down-filled getup over it. It looked designer. John spent enough time with Sherlock now to be able to tell when clothes were expensive. He also looked familiar, the way a celebrity might when you've never seen them without their makeup.

"Don't recognise me?" his captor said with an indulgent smile. "It'll come to you." Something about his body language shifted; he seemed smaller, somehow. Was he slouching? He gave John a tentative smile. "Hey." His voice was pitched higher, too, and he looked at John from under his eyelashes. "What's in the, um, _Breathing?_ My girlfriend said I could order whatever I wanted."

" _Jim?_ " John squeaked.

Jim--if that was indeed his name, and the way his night had suddenly come over all Bond, John could not be sure--snapped back into his suit and grinned all teeth at John. "Oh, are we on a first name basis already? Isn't that lovely. So, _John_ , I suppose you're wondering why I've brought you here tonight."

"Even if I wasn't, I guess you're going to tell me," said John, who'd seen this bit on television many, many times before. He wondered why he wasn't more scared. Maybe it was shock.

Jim gave a flutter of his hands that may or may not have been a dramatic flourish. "If you look down, you might observe that I have attached to you a bomb."

John looked down. Sure enough, there under the green parka, was an assortment of wires and lights and what looked like modelling clay but might have been plastic explosives.

"The bomb is on a timer," Jim explained. "At seven in the morning, the bomb will go off, and there will be bits of John Watson all over the inside of the freezer. You'll probably be unconscious by then, so you won't feel anything."

"Well, that's kind of you," said John. He tested his bonds: his wrists were ziptied together as well as being lashed to the back of the chair, and his ankles were ziptied to the legs. It was one of the chairs from the front, and was thus quite small, and bright red.

"But the neighbours will most likely hear the explosion," Jim continued. "Also, someone might very well phone the police with an anonymous tip, hmm? And then the police will come and investigate, and what do you think will happen?"

John knew very well what would happen. The police would close the shop for days, perhaps weeks, as they investigated the crime. Sherlock would throw a fit, but that wouldn't matter. And then no one would ever again buy ice cream from an establishment where there'd been a dead body in the freezer, much less a dead body splattered all over the walls and shelves. Sherlock would be forced to close the shop. Maybe his reputation would survive and he'd be able to reopen somewhere else, but who would he find to cosign the lease? Who would manage the business affairs? Where would Sherlock find another _colleague?_

"You're not going to ask me why I'm doing this?" Jim tilted his head in what was probably supposed to be a coy manner and instead came off as obscene.

"No. There's no point. You're obviously mad." John tried the ties again. No good. He wondered why the police didn't just use zipties instead of handcuffs.

Jim clapped his hands in delight. "Wonderful! You're really quite wonderful; I can see why Sherlock likes you. What's that you're doing there? Please; I'm not an idiot. I know how to tie someone up properly. At least, I know how to tell other people to tie someone up properly," he reflected.

So Jim wasn't working alone, then. Great. John sighed and let his head fall back so that he squinted up at the lights in the ceiling. His fingers were starting to go numb.

Jim apparently took this move as a sign of defeat, because he leaned close and purred, "It's all right. You'll just die. That's what people do."

Absolutely barking. Well, there was nothing for it. John was mad, too; after all, he'd gone into professional cooking in the first place.

What happened next, John would put down to sheer luck. He pitched himself forwards with as much momentum as he could muster, which wasn't much, given the way he was secured. His forehead connected with Jim's chin and pitched him over backwards. Jim must have hit his head against something, John wasn't sure what, because he couldn't see. But he heard the _crack_ , and then Jim lay still on the floor, John half on top of his legs, still tied to a chair. They must have looked a sight, but John wasn't thinking about that. He was thinking about how Jim wasn't moving, and how he needed to get out.

The freezer door had a push-handle on the inside. John rolled so that he wasn't quite on top of Jim anymore and started to kick and wriggle his way over to it. He couldn't really stand with his legs secured to the chair, but with some luck and effort he might be able to throw himself against that handle just right. Jim might wake up before then, if John hadn't killed him with that crack to the head. Ha! Served him right. If John froze to death in here, at least it'd be with the knowledge that he'd taken that nutter with him.

He was about halfway there when the door swung open, seemingly of its own accord. Sherlock peered down at John. John stared up at Sherlock. He'd never seen Sherlock look so completely taken aback. sherlock gaped down at John, then over at Jim, still out cold on the floor, and then back at John.

"Well," said Sherlock.

"You're late," said John, and started laughing.

\-----

Hours later, after the police had been called and Jim taken away (he wasn't dead, after all) and a very long, confusing night at the police station, John and Sherlock were able to go home. Well, John thought of it as home; judging from the way Sherlock flopped onto John's couch and put his shoes up on the armrest, he felt the same way. John lowered himself creakily into his armchair and didn't look forward to opening the ice cream shop in six hours. At least they didn't have to show up two hours early anymore.

"Jim Moriarty." John rolled the shape of the name around on his tongue. "I still can't believe it. Should I have asked for his autograph?"

Sherlock made a disparaging sound. John smiled.

Jim Moriarty was better known as the proprietor of Moritarty, very successful small chain of boutique patisseries, with several locations in London and throughout the United Kingdom, with plans to open in Hong Kong and Sydney. Despite the name, they were best known for their cupcakes, petite gourmet creations in flavours like pumpkin pie with ginger icing and blueberry with meyer lemon icing, whimsically and fancifully decorated with little skulls, bowties, bombs, broken hearts, and other such accoutrements. They were very popular with young people. (There were also normally iced cupcakes as well, for their parents and others who didn't really enjoy dead cartoon bunny faces on their food.) There was a Moritarty cookbook and a line of box mixes that you could purchase at Marks & Spencers.

"You knew it was him," said John.

"I thought I recognised him, after seeing him at the shop with Molly." Sherlock stretched, which had the effect of sprawling him over both arms of John's couch. "I knew he didn't work in any canteen. Then those little. . . surprises started turning up, and it was too much to be coincidence."

John rubbed an exasperated hand over his face. "You could have said something."

"I had no proof." Sherlock sounded uncommonly serious, and the look he gave John was grave. "What would you have said, John, if I told you that Jim Moriarty was waging war against my ice cream shop? What would anyone have said?"

"That were mad," John admitted. "All right, I take your point. Why did he do it, then? Surely you weren't competition."

Sherlock somehow managed to give an elegant shrug despite lying down. "We'll never know unless he makes a full confession, which is unlikely in the extreme. But I'd wager a guess that he wants to expand into ice cream and wants me either on his side or out of the picture entirely."

"And he was going to do this by blowing me up?"

Sherlock waved a hand. "It made sense from his point of view. Without you, I'd be oarless and rudderless, ripe for the picking. And if I refused his offer, well, I was unlikely to manage the shop on my own, or find another partner. Either way he won."

John shook his head. "Amazing. That's just. . . amazing."

"Thank you." Sherlock sounded pleased. That wasn't really the way John had intended for it to be taken, but, well. Let the child enjoy himself.

Sherlock sank into a contented silence after that, slouched low in John's chair with his chin on his chest, staring into the middle space. John watched Sherlock and tried to imagine that he was Sherlock's oar and rudder. Sherlock looked better lately: colour in his face, filling out his clothes, a spring in his step. Mrs. Hudson had remarked on it the other day.

"Did you know," said John, "that Mrs. Hudson has a flat free? With two bedrooms?"

A slow smile curled the edges of Sherlock's mouth. "I thought you'd never ask."

\---end---

**Author's Note:**

> [coloredink.tumblr.com](http://coloredink.tumblr.com/)
> 
> [sumiwrites.wordpress.com](https://sumiwrites.wordpress.com/) (if you wanna see the books I've written)


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